"So much climate damage comes from assuming that Earth is simple, that it is easy to control and that it will bend to our will. Standing up against those simplifying assumptions is fundamentally a humanist thing to do."
From a recent interview I did... here's the rest:
humanists.uk/2026/03/06/h...
So, obviously this isn’t true. But if the CEO actually believes this nonsense, it implies he thinks maybe he’s enslaving a sentient being that has the capacity to feel emotional distress. And he hasn’t immediately halted operations to suss out how to resolve that?
I think one reason that many of us are skeptical that the regime in Tehran will fall with airpower alone is that the US also tried this in Iraq in 1991, as Operation Desert Storm transitioned into the no-fly zones of Operations Provide Comfort I/II. 👇
www.cfr.org/articles/rem...
what is the case for thinking that the duration of the conflict will be up to Trump?
My point, to be clear, is that this is a version of sanewashing.
It's not quite that, but it's blame-shifting: Blaming incompetence, where we have abundant evidence that many, if not most, of the reasons she will be remembered were either intentional or known inevitabilities.
remember when trump proposed gutting the FDIC
Given the obvious portents for Republicans, seems that this election is going to be riddled with fake Democrats and the billionaires that fund them.
Duolingo doesn’t train you in reading, affect, or writing. It’s mainly useful to keep a language active for someone who already commands multiple skills. It will not teach you to write at all
As someone who studied another culture at a graduate level and was being trained to teach German to English speakers, this is so true. Duolingo in particular provides none of the cultural and grammatical scaffolding for learning a language well enough to use it
This is so true, especially in collaborative environments. I’m about to open a show that I did projection design for and off the top of the dome, only 1 image survived from the initial pass for an audience to see it
Vibe coding broke people's brains because they had a bad understanding of the software design process.
The pop culture model goes something like this: start out with a sketch and then render that same idea in progressively finer detail.
So when tools could "skip" to high detail, people went WOW.
Interestingly, a lot of people are asking whether the rules of war apply differently depending on whether there’s a declared war or not. Most do not. Most depend only to a “state of belligerency” existing in fact, regardless of official declarations.
Oh man we are HAVING A NEWS DAY I see
*BLACKROCK’S $26 BILLION PRIVATE CREDIT FUND LIMITS WITHDRAWALS
Chart of Temp Help Services employment past 10 years
Notable revision to temp help services: this industry is *highly* cyclical and had reported a surge in payrolls starting last November. That's in large part been revised away; while declines from the last few years are rolling off, there's no longer a clean spike.
Just a fun reminder that the headline number is the softest indicator, the revisions are the hardest data.
That feeling when you owe 53,173,939 refunds, with interest ...
I get it, this particular Secretary of the Interior is basically the US government service rep for the oil industry so it’s not exactly RFK jr opining on the subject, but dude has zero subject knowledge and no statutory authority
Over and over again, the talking heads for the Trump admin are WAY out of their lanes. Like no one at Department of the Interior should be talking about Venezuela in public, on the record
Wrote about the central lie of prediction markets. How they are the perfect technology for a low-trust society, simultaneously exploiting and reifying an environment in which believing the motives behind any person or action becomes harder. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
*non-zero probability that, unfortunately, this might be none of them, the elected ones are so MAGA pilled, either through belief or intimidation, that literally nothing will shake them from the fever dream
Again, Trump has done more than enough mad king shit to be impeached many times over, but starting a third war in as many months should be a tipping point for any Republican within touching distance of reality*
This is not that surprising given that we've driven a coupla million immigrant workers out of the country in a short time, but raises the question: Is an economy premised on "growth" still possible in a society that disdains immigrants and is reproducing children at less than replacement rate?
At a minimum, directly toppling the Cuban government puts Gitmo in harm’s way. The scenarios all get much worse from there
The extremely worrying part of this corner of the world war that Trump is starting is that there are already quite a few boots on the ground in Cuba
Anyway, I stopped listening to that podcast
Also, the only job sector that was showing any long term growth at healthy numbers is health care and that is massively supported by immigrants at every level of care
On a financial podcast last month, someone speculated that 30,000 added construction jobs might be the glimmers of the AI capex making its way into the economy and well, one month later
We are once again sliding into a geopolitical situation where a lot of people suddenly realize that many commodities we depend on as a society are transported via ships
it's that recurrent moment again where awful people are replaced by different awful people and yet I'm still sort of glad to see the original awful people gone
Unconditional surrender is not something someone demands from a limited operation, in case anyone other than Congressional Republicans were in any doubt about whether this is a war or not
